Three Encounters

“I don’t deserve any of this!” I thought infuriately. “What a mess I had to be involved in. I hate Demeter. I hate Harmonia. I hate demons…”

I’m a completely average woman- average in height, weight, and intelligence, leading a monotonous life in the arid city of Hillastine. My neighbor is another woman, Harmonia? she is about my age, but how much I despise the way she acts, most importantly the way she boasts about the amount of land she has. Every year in the fall, Harmonia boasts about her profits and the quality of her precious produce in the marketplace when I had little to none. Sitting impatiently at my stand with a dearth of color on the counter, I give her the “demon-look” whenever she walked by me with all twenty of her wooden crates filled to the brim with plump vegetables and chock full of all the colors in the rainbow.

It is October, the time for harvests, and yet again, Harmonia has prevailed in producing a greater sum of money than me. One by one the market-women would come to admire her work: they would admire the yellow corn, the green zucchini, and the red peppers, which were all the colorful varieties I did not have. How much I envied her profits and simply everything about that woman- the way she shoved her hair into everyone’s face, as if to say that she had the best-quality keratin, the way she wore all the glitzy diamond rings and the pearl necklaces and the ruby earrings to show the world that she had the greens, and most importantly, the way she walked arrogantly across dirt-ridden sidewalk with custom-made leather high heels and an extravagant shawl that blinded all the eyes that crossed paths with it.

Not being able to hold it in any longer, one day, as if I was possessed by a demon, I impulsively destroyed all of her delicacies in a glowing, red fire like that of eternal Hell.

That night, I went to bed exuberantly; her crops were gone, and now I could make her envy me. I had always waited for this revenge. I was so excited by this idea that I couldn’t even sleep that night. Somehow, I felt absolutely no guilt from my horrific actions. I just felt empowered.

As I waited for daylight to break, I heard two strange voices that could barely be heard even in the stillness of the night. I shook my head. “Probably my mind,” I thought. But it wouldn’t go away. Although I wanted to escape the mumblings of these voices, my mind did not allow them to leave. The horror struck me, and soon, I became filled with fear and guilt. I could feel a dense layer of sweat forming between my body and my clothes, soaking the thick blankets and the bed sheets. I couldn’t even make out the sound of the words. What were these two voices? Was it my conscience trying to tell me something? I just couldn’t understand.

The next morning, I entered the garden with wariness. I was so caught up in my own thoughts that I failed to realize that I was walking on a patch of crisp leaves. “AHHHH! WHERE ARE THEY!” I screamed. My crops, the two or three types that I had tended to over those long and lengthy months had disappeared. My mind was shocked; my body angry with rage. Shallowly, I wondered if it was Harmonia. What if she knew about what I did and came to take revenge? I trudged over to her house. I wanted an explanation.

“What did you do to them?”

“I don’t comprehend.” Harmonia calmly said, while reading a book that only people with brains could understand.

“You know what I’m talking about. I can even show you. I want to search your house.” Not expecting an answer, I was surprised when Harmonia said, “I still have no clue as to what you’re implying.” My fuming body pushed her to the side, while I jolted across the room. Looking through all the closets, pantries, and rooms throughout the house like a lunatic, I couldn’t find anything, not one measly piece of squash. I was in dreadful shock. I knew it was her. It had to be her. She just had a suspicious aura that occupied every inch of her body and every ounce of air she breathed. How calmly she told me that she didn’t understand. “Nice job, Harmonia,” I thought, “But you can’t outwit me.” I wanted to grab her by the neck and strangle her until the rosy cheeks of hers turned icy blue.

Yet, as I walked back to my home disappointedly and languidly, my mind pondered upon other thoughts. Was it the gods? Did they favor this girl? After all, the gods would know that I destroyed Harmonia’s crops. But then what happened to mine? Were those voices the voices of the gods?

When I was covered up in my frigid yet damp bed sheets, I was in fear of her and the gods. I had even more strange thoughts going through my head? was she perhaps sent by the gods to taunt me? No, this couldn’t have been the case; she was just an average, yet evil woman.

In the morning, after a sleepless and apprehensive night, I found an idol next to my bedside. At first, it looked interesting. There were four little carvings on it, with four faces, and each one had a distinct characteristic. The first face I looked like a goddess; I could tell from the perfection in the thin lines of her face. Next came the face of a demon; this one had a grotesque facial expression full of wickedness. I looked at the next face; this one had a strikingly similar appearance to Harmonia with her signature smirk and glossy lips. However, the one that shocked me the most was the small-faced carving that soon stared back at me. As I squinted to lead my eye throughout the carving, I noticed that it looked exactly like me. And I could tell that it was angrily looking back at me. My heart sank. I knew I was in trouble. Was Zeus going to punish me for my jealousy?

“Where am I? How come I feel so stiff?” I thought. Then reality stuck me: I was stuck inside the idol. Looking to the left, I saw the face of a demon; to the right, Harmonia. I could hear her talking. “Oh Demeter, what are we going to do?” Harmonia inquired. I started to grit my teeth with steam bubbling inside me and oozing out of my mouth. Looking in the distance, I saw a thunderbolt coming towards me. “I don’t deserve this!” I thought infuriately. “What a mess I had to be involved in. I hate Demeter. I hate Harmonia. I hate the demons…” I could feel the electricity overcoming my senses; my body was tingling now. I felt my body trying to cling to a thread of life, but slowly that thread started to become thinner and thinner while my hands were clinging on to it tighter and tighter. I felt weaker and weaker. But my forever-burning rage radiated into the sky…

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